Posted
by
CmdrTacoon Wednesday January 28, 2009 @12:36PM
from the this-can-only-end-well dept.

suraj.sun writes "AT&T and Comcast, two of the nation's largest Internet service providers, are expected to be among a group of ISPs that will cooperate with the music industry in battling illegal file sharing, three sources close to the companies told CNET News. The RIAA said last month that it had enlisted the help of ISPs as part of a new antipiracy campaign. The RIAA has declined to identify which ISPs or how many. It's important to note that none of the half dozen or so ISPs involved has signed agreements. But as it stands, AT&T and Comcast are among the companies that have indicated they wish to participate in what the RIAA calls a 'graduated response program.'"

As far as I can tell, this only increases their liability. Services providers have typically received immunity from the actions of their users, so long as there is a clear line between the service provider and the actions of their users. By blurring that line, it only opens them up to further liabilities. Universities learned this the hard way by giving in to the RIAA.

By dealing with the RIAA at all the ISPs are making a huge mistake. Is my utility company liable if I install grow lamps and start a marijuana farm because they failed to alert the authorities about the power increase? Is my phone company liable if I start calling the state prison regularly and it turns out that I'm organizing to have an informant killed because they weren't monitoring my phone records and didn't recommend a phone tap?

By playing along even in a small role, the ISPs are really stepping in it...

By dealing with the RIAA at all the ISPs are making a huge mistake. Is my utility company liable if I install grow lamps and start a marijuana farm because they failed to alert the authorities about the power increase? Is my phone company liable if I start calling the state prison regularly and it turns out that I'm organizing to have an informant killed because they weren't monitoring my phone records and didn't recommend a phone tap?

By playing along even in a small role, the ISPs are really stepping in it...

I could be wrong, but if there is a spike in usage of water or power, utility companies will inform police of a possible grow op.

That decision against thermal-imaging cameras is quite silly, wouldn't that mean cops would need a warrant to look through your window? It's all just radiation, be it light or infra-red. I know the decision has all sorts of silly language about how the tech isn't generally available but still, passive imaging should always be OK.

That decision against thermal-imaging cameras is quite silly, wouldn't that mean cops would need a warrant to look through your window?

No. It's based on "expectation of privacy". If you do something in front of a window that's open to the street, there's no real expectation of privacy. If you do something in your windowless bathroom, the expectation is that it won't be seen. If the cops look into your closed up garage, whether they use IR/thermographic imaging, X-rays, sonographic imaging, or a code scanner that opens your garage door, if they do so without a warrant, that crosses the line. Of course if they can convincingly say they thoug

No but the GP is close. The power company does look for odd balancing issues vs power usage. People who grow large quanities of dope tend to be a bit stupid and cheap. Including putting a couple thousand watts of lights on a single circuit in their basement. The in balanced loadis noticed by the power companies. Normally as long as you pay your bill they don'tcare. However the stupid and cheap part comes into play. They forget to pay their bill. And police eventually get called.

If the phone company started looking for a burst of phone calls to Mexico and informed the Minute Men if there was a spike, people'd be furious.

That is absolutely correct and more to the point, the story tag 'sneakernet' is the process that will ensure that file sharing never dies, and in fact directly robs the RIAA members of revenue. When you and 25 of your friends make a list of music you like, then each of you buys one new CD and copies it 25 times and passes them around to your CD group, the RIAA members lose directly. This is not a try-before-buy thing like a lot of file sharing is, it's full on loss of CD sales revenue:-)

Besides making the ISPs culpable in any file sharing, they drive the problem to a place where it can't be detected or stopped. At that point, the RIAA members will have to admit that they aren't making money because all the do is promote crap at extortionate prices.

This house of cards will fall too, as soon as NYCountryLawyer starts ISPvsThePeople blog and documents all the legal crap that starts happening when ISPs start narcing for the RIAA. Once they lose safe harbor protection via a law suit over P2P it will be interesting to see what other legal trouble they get into. Will they then be liable for voice traffic issues? If someone calls and threatens me and I ask the ISP to block voip calls from that person, will they become liable if they don't? Can I get a court order to force them to? There are literally thousands of issues that can arise if they lose safe harbor status. I kind of look forward to it in a weird sort of way.

then each of you buys one new CD and copies it 25 times and passes them around to your CD group, the RIAA members lose directly.

Maybe, but there's also the possibility that each of you would have only bought a single CD one way or another - so the RIAA made exactly as much money on you and your friends pooling your resources. In other words, if each of you are willing to spend $20 on a CD and you share it with 25 friends who are willing to reciprocate, you'll have spent a total of $500. Who is to say that the group of you would have spent more than that if you didn't share?

Replace "sneakernet" with VPN tunnels to a central datacenter location. Us IT folks are a fairly resourceful bunch. VPN tunnels can be explained away as work connections. Why so much traffic? I do graphics/video design work for a living sir!

My ex gf's dad built a garage in the middle of winter one year, and in order for the concrete to set properly, he had to run two big electric heaters day and night to keep it warm. The police came with a warrant to search the property for a grow op (alerted by the electricity company for abnormally high power usage), but found a new garage instead. They were a bit embarrassed, but turned their attention towards the fact that he now had 2 garages and too much of his property covered by outbuildings. He said he would knock down the old garage when the new one was all finished, but he lied, it's still there.

As for grow ops, people get busted here all the time, at least weekly, often more frequently. They've moved into affluent neighbourhoods too, and now the law says home sellers have to disclose whether or not a home was used for a grow op (only within the past year though IIRC), because of all the mold and other problems that come from grow ops. The address list is also published on the police website [winnipeg.ca].

They cannot enter your house unless the electrical meter is located inside your house.

The power company owns everything up to the meter, beyond that it belongs to the owners. They are permitted to enter your property lines to service up till that point (including checking the meter).

The stupid part however is that large scale urban growers generally steal power, there have been instances where some have tapped directly into the grid lines and bypass the meter. This will usually result in the power company

The power companies notice when the power meter readings don't change month to month at a particular residence and the meter readers see lights on. Alarms can be set on the PDA/reader. The usage drain they can't identify is mostly written off to line losses.

Many power companies are currently investigating (some already investing) in "smart metering" that gives more data points per day per meter and allows remote meter reading. This may make hiding usage a little more difficult as anomalous profiles might

You're probably right. I do quite a bit of consulting for K-12 schools; the watchword there is that once you attempt to filter content, you'd better filter perfectly, as you're responsible for anything that gets past.
Does this translate into sanctioning your own users for inappropriate actions? I think it does.

As far as I can tell, this only increases their liability. Services providers have typically received immunity from the actions of their users, so long as there is a clear line between the service provider and the actions of their users.

What you are referring to is "Common Carrier" status. It prevents companies like UPS from being criminally liable for shipping cocaine, for example, overseas. It also prevents Telcoms from being liable for carrying information used to conduct criminal activities. If they actually get involved, though, they lose common carrier, and thus can become sued (or charged) for anything that occurs over their network.

No, "graduated response", is right out of the LBJ handbook on how to loose a war. His Rolling Thunder bombing campaign was advertised as a "graduated response" to NVA incursions in the South. From 65 to 69 it never did anything but increase the population of the Hanoi Hilton.

If LBJ was trying to loose a war, he did an excellent job!

(If you really meant "lose" instead, then that changes the entire meaning of your post. Sometimes spelling is actually important!)

First, there's the problem with measuring, "work out how much money the record companies make from sales." Whose numbers do you trust? Second, there's the issue of distribution of the money. Who gets what share of the money? Third there's the problem that once this system is put into place, there's no way of measuring how much money the record companies would have made this year if this system were not put in place. So how do you determine whether the amount should rise or fall year-to-year.

The issue comes with "current" sales being less than their "goals." (A fundamental always present problem in capitalism, particularly of companies with shareholders). If you make an RIAA blessed file sharing service and let them set the price on their goals, you've at best, produced a less-financially viable alternative (due to their poor public persona) to other all-you-can-eat music services, and at worst further intrenched their near-monopoly when it comes to price setting.

This is another proposed solution. A voluntary (for your ISP, not for you) "music tax", that is an awful idea. It was discussed here [slashdot.org], and here's [slashdot.org] my extended list of why it's a bad idea.

1. AT&T has shown that it is willing to sacrifice its consumers for its own agenda (and profit?) - as in the wiretapping case.

2. Given that they have snooped on users' data in the past, I am not really surprised that they are doing it again, since a) they were protected by immunity the first time, and can probably do it again should this turn out to be illegal, and b) they have the technological framework in place already.

Perhaps I should stop trying to be subtle in my posts and carry a sledgehammer... (yea, I'm new here)

Does this really surprise anyone given that AT&T was at the forefront of the illegal wiretapping scandal?

Likewise, I doubt anyone(who reads slashdot) would be surprised that Comcast is pulling this nonsense. They already shown a willingness to inspect and screw with their customers' packets. They have been shown to actively and intrusively interfere with p2p communication, and by teaming up with the RIAA they can now do so under the guise of fighting piracy.

The gang (Comcast, AT&T and the RIAA), have ganged up to frustrate internet users. That's sad. I hope they know full well that a chain is as strong as its weakest link. So unless all ISPs join "the gang" which is not the case, this arrangement will not work.

Until AT&T and Comcast de-settlement-free-peer any large ISP that doesn't join the gang.

Or, even more likely, RIAA will sign on about 75% of the ISP market, then start a vindictive, focused litigation campaign against the customers of the last 25%. The relatively lighter treatment given to AT&T and Comcast customers will drive customers from the 25% stalwarts to the 75% sell-outs.
This divide-and-conquer strategy works pretty much all the time, as long as consumers keep buying with their short-te

No idea if this still holds true, but Verizon was the company that refused to hand over their logs to the RIAA all those years ago. They certainly earned my respect at the time, and they still have my business.

Verizon passed the notice/letter on to you rather than giving your information to the RIAA/MPAA so that you could be named in a lawsuit. What happened to you is far more preferable than the other option. But if you don't want to believe that, that's up to you.

I now have almost 200gigs of music. There's only so much I can listen. also, when I want "new" or "more" I just bring my drive over to a friend's house and bingo - a year's worth of downloads in what, 5 minutes?

LAN parties are even better - more productive and a greater selection.

It reminds me of an old saying(not THAT old but old in regards to the internet)

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a semi-truck full of backup tapes.

Considering that many of us are running around with 100+ gig pocket drives, downloading (at least for some of us) is mostly a thing of the past. At a local level and even a regional level, a guy in a car with a 500GB drive has more bandwidth than *most* residential and small business internet connections. I don't know about you but the last time I tried to download a multi-gig file it took a few days. Even flat out it would take several hours at least.

I think RIAA and the like are in for a very very hard uphill battle on this.
There are also far reaching effects of this type of relationship. As a previous poster commented;

"Corporate america is creating a legal regime and prosecution system outside the law."

Thats exactly what this is. RIAA can't win legally so they make a deal with the ISPs to cut off customers who are file sharing or worse, just enough pressure and cooperation to release customer information that can then be used to "coerce" individuals into "compliance".

Also, doesn't this put the ISPs into potentially hot water? What happens when one of their subscribers argues that its the ISP's responsibility to prevent sharing and since they failed to protect the copyright on behalf of RIAA, its not the fault of the subscriber? IANAL but it seems to me that this may be more trouble than its worth. I know the ISPs are no angels but really this is like getting into bed with the devil.

It's true, bandwidth is pretty sweet with portable drives. The other day I biked about 40 miles with a 1tb hard drive in my bag. I calculated that my bandwidth was about 110 mb/s. Latency was a bit rough though, at 2.5 hours...

Comcast is seeking to squash P2P to avoid upgrading and maintaining their bandwidth. 90% of their problems is that they have too small backbone pipes going into headends. If they would run a REAL ISP instead of the half ass job they do they would understand how to do it.

disclaimer: I used to be a Comcast manager, I know the cable-modem system inside and out. It's one reason why I will never use Comcast as an ISP.

Given that the RIAA/MPAA create music and movies, and that telecoms are bundling TV channels as well as internet services, and the people producing the content for the TV channels are pretty much all members of the RIAA/MPAA or share their interests in protecting their copyrighted works, it's hardly a surprise that ISPs are willing to cooperate. In fact, I'm surprised more ISPs aren't.

Those ISPs that are purely providing connectivity and don't also have cable/satellite TV services among their offered products may hold out against the RIAA/MPAA a bit longer, but I don't expect that it'll last. The major players will bundle with content producers, and will comply with assisting in copyright enforcement in order to secure the revenue that their TV packages provide.

Yeah, I always find it surprising that more people aren't concerned about the sort of vertical integration that is involved with a company like Time Warner Cable, and the potential conflicts of interest in providing "good service" for each individual service.

They own the infrastructure, they run the Voice/TV service provided over that infrastructure, and then they also run the Internet service that provides potential competition to their own Voice and TV services. In addition, they also own some of the channels provided over their own TV service, as well as owning the rights to many TV shows and movies shown on those channels.

In each case, there must be some kind of temptation to favor their own products over the competing products that they're also providing access to. To be clear, I'm not alleging that they've done anything wrong, but only that there's an inherent ethical problem. For example, let's say Netflix comes up with a plan to partner with ISPs nationwide to provide a service for video-on-demand. They go to negotiate with Time Warner Cable's ISP division to talk about the idea and negotiate a deal. Do you foresee that TWC is going to seriously consider the deal that would diminish their own video-on-demand services? Or that they might partner with Vonage to provide VoIP?

It's for this sort of reason that I think it may be wise to institute some kind of law that limits vertical integration of ISPs with other services. I've thought for some time that we should probably forbid the people who own the infrastructure (the actual hardware and cable) from providing any service, and require that they provide open access at set fees without any opportunity to negotiate special deals. Since these companies own a monopoly (or duopoly) and represent public infrastructure, they shouldn't be allowed much control over what's sent through their hardware.

It seems to me that whether or not anyone agrees with whether or not virtual piracy is right and just, the RIAA and MPAA continue to be about nine years behind current technologies.Because there are now newsreaders and bittorrent clients for every platform that support encrypted connections over clever ports, the RIAA and MPAA will not be able to include exactly which files were shared, if any, in any court documents they submit for any case where the defendant dutifully encrypted all of their connections.

Since we're stuck with ConCast, I'll have to do a lot more P2P if they're going to team with the Rabid Idiot Asshole Industry. I don't share any files the copyright holders don't want shared, but The Station's The Fog will likely be confused by ConCast and the RIAA by a tune by one of their artists by the same name.

If they try to sue me, I'll have Dave sue THEM for infringing HIS copyright, and I will also sue them for slander.

The first time my AT&T account gives me shit when I go to pirate bay, I'm going over to Time Warner. And when Time Warner gives me shit, then I will sit around all day and remember the good old days when the internet was open and free and we had a large number of different ISP's to choose from (before the dial-up's were replaced by one DSL company and one cable company).

When an ISP gets into the business of content delivery, they're devotion to being the best ISP possible goes out the window. And, unless I'm mistaken, Comcast and AT&T both have their own media delivery services (feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken) so I'm not the least bit surprised that they want to work with the RIAA in this.

It'd be as if UPS owned the roads in your area. They're going to charge tolls to the FedEx trucks. And if you're shipping too much in using another carrier, they're going to start throttling your shipments.

The simple solution is to have the government own the infrastructure and allow companies to sell services over the infrastructure. The companies who sell the services could be called Internet Service Providers or ISPs.

These ISPs like to complain about the excessive bandwidth used by filesharers. I can only assume that once they start kicking these evil users off the system, my connection speeds will increase to the advertised rates, and soon they will be able to reduce my monthly bill.

When will these companies realize who their customers are? It is the subscriber.

If they'll give my information to a corrupt trade organization whose strategy is suing grandmas, kids dead people and folks without computers, who else would they be willing to sell my personal information to?

They are either getting some money from the labels to do this to offset the customers who they are going to piss off, or they are counting on being a natural monopoly in certain markets. That or they've sold more broadband at cheap prices to get folks off dial up and realized that they can't turn a profit when you have folks choking down their connection. If Net Neutrality wins the day, and they can't throttle or shape the user's traffic any more, the only recourse companies will have is kicking their "excessive" users off the plan by either invoking the AUP or getting the RIAA to sue them into being a non-customer so they can let the *AA look like assholes instead of the ISP.

Oh great. Another batch of "that does it, I am ditching Comcast". Note also that they didn't even have to do anything yet, just put out a press release, and the troublemakers (sharers in this case) are busy playing the Crack Suicide Squad - which is exactly what's required from the point of view of the ISPs. Just get them off your own lawn, and report progress to RIAA. There's always enough lemmings (who don't know and don't care) to pay the bills.

Now, if the comments were running to the side of "that does it, I'm getting Comcast accounts for everyone and the dog and sharing like it's 1999", that would make more sense as a response. Otherwise, get used to the periodical pronouncements - they don't cost anything and are having at least some effect.

This too shall pass. A couple of observations. First, P2P accounts for between one-third and four-fifths of internet traffic, depending on the entities collecting the data and the regions from where the data is collected. Either way, it seems like a lot. Second, internet usage continues to grow. People love YouTube, just wait until the quality improves. How many people are watching Netflix's Watch Now as a result of if being available on so many systems? Third, the economy will prevent many, if not most, ISPs from adding additional bandwidth. Thus, in order to keep up with increased legitimate demand without adding more capacity, it makes since that ISPs would want to reduce demand from file sharing. Simple, really.

If they were willing to get off of their behinds simply because of bandwidth problems, then why don't they shut down or at least throttle spambots? I've seen similar numbers to yours for spam bandwidth consumption.

With spambots all it would take is a throttle and an email and automated phone call to the customer telling them that their computer is infected and that they need to get it checked out to restore full service.

I can't believe it would be absolutely *impossible* for them to allow another company to go through the trouble of running their own copper to residents homes. If they did that I'm sure we would see a quick about face in the customer service departments of these companies.

That's the dammed problem.. You get DSL or Cable, one choice or the other and either ones service only needs to be as good as the other guys crappy service.. why can't we have 2 choices each? Maybe allo

Want to download stuff with far less risk? Get a usenet account from a premium provider. Tunnel past your ISP. Download what you want. Enjoy.

Want to know what's there? Hit binsearch.info and see. Maybe you'll find what you need and be able to obtain it easily.

Want to help your ISPs avoid bandwidth problems? Download all you can from their usenet servers.

Want to risk all sorts of crappy involvement with the RIAA, the legal system, and potentially lose your internet connection? Just install any old p2p software and have at it.

Questions and answers for ISPs:

Want to help your business avoid bandwidth problems? Make sure you do a good job of running in-house usenet servers.

Want to screw yourself and your customers, impress technically unsophisticated observers with your faux commitment to the rule of law, and make everyone's life more difficult? Outsource or drop all usenet service and cooperate with the RIAA.

Question for Slashdot:

Why, in the lists above, is the last option the one most often exercised?

We all became Citizens in 1983 [wikipedia.org]. The only British subjects left are people who were a British subjects on 31 December 1948 who did not become a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies, a citizen of a Commonwealth country, a citizen of Pakistan, or a citizen of the Republic of Ireland (and had made a claim to remain a British subject in 1948).

Unfortunately only the ones that get what is going on. It isn't like this is front page headlines on anywhere other than here. The last AP article was slanted to praise the RIAA for giving up its PR dog of suing individual sharers.

There are no other broadband ISPs in many places, including where I live. Hell, I don't even get to choose DSL -- cable is the only option.

AT&T and Comcast know this. They don't give a shit about their customers, because they're usually the only game in town. So the only option is to abandon broadband entirely and stick with a dial-up, spend ridiculous amounts on a leased line, or spend even more ridiculous amounts on satellite Internet (which has lag times that are way too high for VoIP or online gaming). If there were another option I'd be jumping on it in an instant.

I agree with your basic premise that the vast majority of filesharing involves "technically illegal" material.

A better analogy would be if you broke into my house and copied all the contents of my laptop and/or ipod and then left. I tell the police that my data has been stolen but can't prove it, since its all still there.

Its difficult to apply logic and reasoning based on physical goods to bits of data which can be reproduced perfectly and VERY easily.

You can't accurately gauge how much "damage" has been done because technically nothing was damaged. The sharee still has a perfectly usable copy of what ever was shared with whomever and the copyright "owner" is out no more revenue than they would be if the sharee sold the CD used. In the second sale example the seller is responsible for removing the contents from their systems, however since RIAA can't invade your home and seize your computers (yet), enforcing that obligation on the seller is impossible. Granted this analogy has its problems and to be accurate the seller would have to be able to sell an infinite number of copies, that however brings us back to my previous statement about laws designed to regulate physical "things" can't be applied to something which can be infinitely copied perfectly. If I could push a button and produce an identical copy of a car, is that stealing?

I especially liked how you placed the artists first in your list of who we are wronging when you know damn well that they are the LAST people on the list. And lets not forget that when the money does actually show for the artist, RIAA and the like charge the artists for things like breakage (WTF? last time I checked, we weren't using records in the mainstream anymore)

I posit a different approach.

Download all the music you possibly can. But go to the shows when the artists come to your town. It used to be that the music was essentially advertising for the artists when they come to perform. So by stealing the CD you are hurting RIAA but by patronizing the shows and buying the merch at the shows more money goes directly to the artists.

OH NOES! that means that being a musician might actually require some dedication and GASP...TALENT!!!
It used to be that being a successful musician meant producing a quality product and touring for your money.

Am I stealing when I learn how to play my favorite song on the instrument of choice?

How far do you go down this road? Am I eventually going to get charged a fee for humming or singing the "hook" of a song?

Lowid or not, you shouldn't be scared to post your opinions in the open just because people here might disagree with you. If you have been here long enough and contribute regularly and competently you can afford a little Karma to play devils advocate.